For Whom the Bell Tolls
by Tavia
Summary: One chapt fic. An expansion of a character who got approximately three seconds screen time. Wondering who? Well, you might recognize him. It's all in the title.


For Whom the Bell Tolls 

**Disclaimer**: I don't own my principal character, though I think I appreciate him far more than the writers of POTC.  But that's just my opinion.

**Summary**: An expansion on a character who had approximately three seconds screen time.  You'll know him by the end.

**Author's Note**: I believe that the true hero of the battle with the cursed pirates aboard the Dauntless is not any of the people we know so well.  It wasn't Commodore Norrington, though he did arrive with his men in the nick of time to fight the pirates.  It certainly wasn't Governor Swann, despite his valiant fight with the undead hand.  It wasn't even Jack, Will and Elizabeth, who saw to it that the immortal pirates were made mortal again.  I submit that the true hero was a nameless man with no dialogue, whose face we never saw.

**Narrative:**

I don't like this island we've come to.  I didn't like it early this evening, and I don't like it now as I stand my watch and look at it wreathed in dark and fog.  The Isla de Muerta, that Mr. Sparrow called it.  It's a grim place, haunted with old evils and old ghosts.

Not that I really believe in those things, you know, ghosts and curses and suchlike.  A member of the Royal British Navy, I am, and I don't hold with superstition.  Not usually, anyway.  But sometimes…on a dark night at sea, when fog curls in tendrils like a living thing, and a wind picks up, a funny sort of wind that ruffles your hair but ignores your mate's standing next to you, a wind that creaks through the riggings and makes the most ordinary of sounds seem queer and unnatural…well, on a night like that, you've got to wonder.  On a night like this one.  On a night like tonight, anything could happen.  And here we are, anchored off the Island of the Dead, waiting for pirates.  I don't like it.

"All calm, sailor?" Lieutenant Gillette says into my ear.

I take a deep breath to calm my suddenly racing heart.  A landsman, he is, deep down.  A true sailing man would know better than to come up behind a man on a dark night like this.  "All calm, sir," I say, saluting.

"Good."  He smirks at me, obviously having noticed my startled reaction to his arrival.  "Not nervous, are you, sailor?  Surely you don't believe in ghosts."

I shake my head.  "No, sir."  I don't…not really.  And even if I did, I wouldn't admit it with him looking at me superior-like.  Thinks he owns the world just because he's got a blue shirt and a curly white wig.

"Very good."  He continues his walk along the deck, and I return to my contemplation of the island.

Spooky, it is.  But calm.  Except for…  A movement catches my eye.  "Lieutenant?"

Gillette walks back towards me.  "Yes?"

I point.  "There, sir.  I can't be sure in the dark, but it looks like…a boat."

At once he has his spyglass out and trained towards the island.  "Strange…" he murmurs.  "What would two women be doing in a boat out here?"

"Two women, sir?" I repeat, wondering if something's been put in the ship's water supply, or if the Lieutenant might have been drinking something a bit stronger on the side.  Then I reach for my own spyglass, and look out over the water.  It is two women, sitting under parasols.  Remarkably ugly women though…

Suddenly one of the women lowers her parasol to whack the other with it.  The little boat is flooded with moonlight, and the two women both get a lot uglier.

I nearly drop my spyglass.  "Sir, did you see…?"  Skeletons.  Living skeletons.

This would obviously not be a good time to not believe in ghosts.

The Lieutenant's spyglass closes with a snap.  "Pirates.  All hands to the—"

I don't know what he was going to send us to, as he never finished the order.  Or if he did, it was drowned out in the sudden shouts and clangs of swords that rose up behind us.

I whirl around and suddenly the two skeletons in the boat seem tame by comparison.  Spreading across the deck like a flood or a pestilence comes a wave of creatures such as God never made nor gave His blessing to.  Not dead, but neither alive, appalling caricatures of men, made only of bone and shreds of clothing, topped by horribly grinning skulls.  They come at us, naked sword blades glinting in the moonlight, and there is no more time for thought.  All is a whirlwind, a madness, of clashing swords and maneuvering men.

I've always counted myself rather good with a sword.  But a man can't help but be a bit unnerved when fighting a living skeleton.  Nevertheless, after a few feints and a few circles I slip past my opponent's guard and plunge my sword in right where his heart would be.  If he had a body, that is.

As it is, he looks down at my sword protruding from his chest.  And he begins to laugh.  While I'm trying to figure out how, by all that's holy, I can fight a man who can't be killed, especially when my sword is presently residing in his chest, something hard hits me in the back of the head and all goes black.

I wasn't out long, or at least I assume I wasn't.  When I awake, all is still much the same.  For the briefest instant before I open my eyes, I hope very, very much that it was all a very strange nightmare, these nightmarish creatures of death who can't die.  But my eyes open on a scene of carnage, on undead skeletons sending very mortal men to their deaths.

And in this moment I know it's all up for us.  Mortal men can't prevail against immortals, especially when they're outnumbered.  If there were more of us, perhaps we could do something, but Commodore Norrington took his men out in the boats leaving us with a meager force here.  For a moment I passionately curse the Commodore (silently, of course) for leaving us in this position, taking most of the swords and nearly all of the trained soldiers off the ship.  Leaving the ship with the sailors and a tiny handful of soldiers only.  And the governor, of course.  Yes, for this moment I curse Norrington with everything I can think of, and wish him well on his way to the devil.

But a moment later the anger fades and I have to admit it's not really the Commodore's fault.  He did what he thought was best.  It was pure misfortune that what he thought was best left us poor souls to the mercy of the pirates.  Now if we could somehow signal the Commodore and his men, ah, now there would be something.  Norrington has the numbers, the swords and the skills to give these skeletons at least a bit of fear.  But how can we possibly signal the Commodore when it's all we can do to stay alive, and we aren't even succeeding at that?

And then it happens.  Almost as though drawn by my desperate thoughts, something light and almost immaterial brushes tentatively across my hand once, then back again in the opposite direction.  For the first time I glance directly upwards, and realize where I've fallen.  Under the bell.  The touch on my hand was the bell rope, light twisting about in the breeze.  And this gives me a thought.  If I were to ring the bell…

But I must confess that here I hesitate.  For all the thinking I've done, I've only been awake a few moments, no more than a minute I think.  None of the pirates have noticed me, and I haven't moved.  If I just stay here, they'll assume I'm dead and pass over me…perhaps I might live out this night after all.  All I have to do is lie here and be quiet.  If I reach up and ring the bell, they'll be on me at once, and there'll be no hope for me after that.  Best to just lie quiet.

But…all around me men are fighting and dying, good men, men I know and care about.  And I've got a chance to give them a chance.

I reach up for the bell rope and give it a good strong yank, then a second and a third.  The bell swings ponderously, meets the clapper and emits a dull bong.  The sound travels across the water, deep and resounding and _loud_.  It rings once, then reverberates again as the bell swings back.

There is a pirate above me, as eerie a fellow as any of them.  He looks down at me and, with no more concern than he'd put into squashing a bug, he raises his cutlass and sends it swinging down towards me.  But I've already rung the bell and called in the cavalry, and killing me can't undo _that_.

**Norrington and his men heard the ringing bell and rushed back to the Dauntless.  There they put up a good fight against the skeletal pirates until the curse was lifted and the immortals became mortal once more.  The pirates were arrested and tried for their crimes. **

**Author's Note the Second: **Next time you watch POTC, try keeping an eye out during the battle sequence, if you haven't before.  You'll be able to see him at the bottom of the screen as he reaches up to ring the bell.  A skeleton immediately reaches down and kills him.  I thought it was rather tragic, especially since no one else seemed to notice him.  Poor fellow, really.  Anyway, hope you liked the story and leave a review!


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